welcome to another episode of Glide chat my name is Mike Lombardo CEO and founder of Glide fast Consulting with me today is Bob Colson senior manager of application development and servicenow platform owner at gainwell Technologies Bob how are you today doing well thanks Mike thanks for joining thanks for joining we had to reschedule a couple times so I'm really glad to be able to get going here today and uh first of all I just want to thank you for uh for the partnership I mean you've been an amazing partner for Glide fast and uh you guys really took a risk on us and uh brought us in as a vendor and and really been an amazing partnership so thank you so much so Bob why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got you know into it uh maybe a little little high level about your career and um and we'll start there okay I've been in it about 30 years or so so I'm looking towards that retirement button here pretty soon but uh kind of spanned all over the place uh from from out of college you know I came out of college right at the right time when truthfully when computers just came out in a weird way and laptops were just starting to hit the market yeah and really my my career pivoted more towards networking it's when Network and networking and that old coax to networking days started to happen so I jumped on the network bandwagon rode that for pretty much most of my career with with companies like Worldcom before they went under and and manage originally all the Worldcom Network back in the day and then when I came over to my last organization um as a kind of a process lead process owner this CIO at the time uh said hey we we want to put a tool on the plate internally to stop going through a third party and so we did a big RFP on all the different tools and platforms out there and and truthfully we came up with servicenow yep so then I jumped on the servicenow bandwagon as a as an app owner yeah and and never never done that before applications uh so that was a good journey for me personally just to get on that trail and and did that about I think I've been out about 12 years now I started with Geneva that date show with with my oh yeah yeah so I've been at it for a while and not a not a coder I'm not not a certified admin or anything like that but I know enough to be dangerous I know how the platform operates I'm having gone through multiple onboarding Journeys I think I've done about 22 now correctly with yeah onboarding different organizations or divisions or business units so yeah feel pretty confident and gone through some trial and errors to to learn learn what not to do and what to do better yep and now of course again well um game well is about two years old gainwell was a prior was part of dxc and dxc shifted out their Professional Services for Health and Human Services from a state and federal level yep and so they've been supporting that for about 40 years prior but a venture capitalist came in said hey let's let's start game well again we're about two and a half years old so we're we're like a a two billion dollar startup in a weird way wow um and like any new Journey there's there's a lot of opportunity a lot of moving Parts but at the same time we're getting to build servicenow from the ground up which is awesome and that's why I came over and joined the game mail team I'll tell you you know um first of all congratulations on such an amazing career and you know a couple things really stuck up one is you know you seem to not be afraid to reinvent yourself when needed uh especially you know going from Worldcom right it's a little little different now which is very brave right and I think a lot of people out there are a little hesitant to reinvent themselves you know a lot of people say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks and I couldn't disagree more right I think uh especially in technology where things are changing you've got to adapt um and and you know there's there's a lot of challenges associated with that but I'll give you a ton of credit there and I and I loved hearing you know a lot about like the lessons you were just talking about right like what not to do right all right we went down this path made this mistake let's let's not do that again you know and you know that goes all the way back when I was a customer over you know a dozen years ago we started on the Aspen release um I made a lot of those mistakes I over customized you know I had a vendor you mentioned the name actually I'm not going to repeat it they were they were actually my partner actually before they acquired uh before the company was acquired uh it was before that but we made some mistakes together and uh you know that just shaped so much of the rest of my career care of like okay now now I understand we need to follow best practices there's a reason why we don't want to customize the the platform in a bad way um that's going to affect upgrades and there's gonna be upgrades every you know twice a year there's upgrades coming we know there's gonna be changes um so I that's uh that's incredible insightful for our audience to really understand don't be afraid to reinvent yourself and don't be afraid to make mistakes just make sure you learn from them and try not to do it again you touched on something that was pretty funny which we all in the servicenow space know this but we rarely practice it is don't over customize yeah yep and and that's that's one of the big things I learned about two organizations ago where where we were Yes Men We just kept yes we'll do this do that and yes and consumed and You're gonna laugh but our upgrade turned out to be about 26 hours on that platform upgrade and I'm just like you know I'm too old for these all-nighters and that one's done big time yeah that's too much and so I I really took took that one to heart and and especially now being at gainwell where I'm getting pushed to customize like everybody you know we'll always customize a little bit but it's like a balance between you know how much and and all that and and that's one thing I'm really standing firm and of course rattling some cages but we all know and don't want to go through that you know 20 or 30 hour upgrade again that's just that's exactly feasible so that I've learned that lesson big time and and really trying to push that keep the customization like button yeah and you know it's like it's crazy because a lot of people confuse what customization is and you know as a configuration we try to focus on personal personalization so we try to stay away from both of those words configuration customization say we want to personalize your environment because development needs to happen you know that it everybody knows that I think but it needs to happen the right way it needs to happen in a best solution model right where we're avoiding bad practices right and that's I think that's the word customize you know it's those bad practices you know but you know building a custom application or scoped application is totally fine right with with the right development with the right architecture so that's what we try to focus on glide fast we always try to focus on building developing the correct way Fallen best practices avoiding the bad ones another thing I love to be saying too about uh you know just being yes you know yes men and women right like it's an art form really to how you can deliver Hey you know what that's a great idea but if we do it this way we're not going to have upgrade issues and it's still going to have the same result you're looking for and that's really you know a great consultant that's a great leader and a platform owner just to be able to give your customer or your department your division your users what they want but also keeping the the parameters of best practice and making everybody happy right instead of saying that's a terrible idea why would we do that right you do it in a way with listen here's a here's how I can get you what you're looking for but and also we're staying in the parameters where we need to uh you know that's also the beauty of service now I mean yes there's there's literally I mean I'm sure there's some but there's not much you can't do there's some module there's some or scope app I mean there's waste across the Finish Line there really really is it's just how much do you want to consume or can you consume without overly customizing I mean back to that discussion so that's the part I really love when I took on the servicenow Journey of looking at the power of that platform it is as you guys know it is it is incredible yeah um it's it costs money clearly to to do things but you know if you have enough uh buying from from your customers on what they're after and produce good Solutions you know they'll pay for it and that's one thing I've also learned is to make sure we give them the those options and costs you know cost benefits and that whole cost analysis but at the end of the day we know servicenow can do pretty much anything yeah it's just trying to understand what they want and what we can provide without getting ourselves in a control of customization that's the game right exactly and I'll tell you when I was Consulting developing and stuff almost every single time when I would say I'd go there and say servicenow can't do that or you know I'm about to say that and I I'd say probably 90 of the time uh it I would be you know stand corrected stand corrected so I I taught myself then okay let me not be before I do my diligence let me never say that because uh sometimes I've just you know over the years I've just I've been amazed about some of the things servicenow can do that I just didn't expect it to yeah well especially I you know for me at least I don't know if it was romish but somewhere around the Rome maybe a little before Rome servicenow really did some great things oh yeah I mean oh yeah moments of oh wow you guys do that now and then keep expanding to that but yeah I've really enjoyed yeah post-romish maybe it's New York but but somewhere in that range it's it's been I mean it's hard for anyone out there to to deny that it truly is a solid platform and can do pretty much anything you want and then from us on the back end coding it it's really not that hard no the coding's one thing and the development but I think another challenge with servicenow is just understanding all there's so many tools at your you know that you can leverage it's just knowing like all the options and knowing and there's and knowing the best way because there's like five different ways you give me a challenge there's five different ways I can do it there's five ways I can make a failed read only but there's one best way for your use case you know so I think a lot of that is the skill set that a lot of consult have now is just knowing which tool to use out of the tool bag which uh you know which solution to provide just you know given all the all the opportunity you have to to leverage Solutions you know loving this conversation by the way I think we could uh probably do this all night I'd love to but I'd love to hear a little bit of um your experience with glide fast why Glide fast and um you know definitely some positives uh about work yeah I mean it's funny segue into what you just said I mean there's so much that servicenow has to offer and at least from from my journey here at gainwell it's it's it's been you know Fast and Furious I mean we we have to build this thing quickly you know HHS isn't slowing down and in fact with covet and some of that stuff behind us um we we tracked all that I mean we were very very integral in that whole you know dynamic the last couple years so we've been on a fast-paced course to get servicenow to to meet our customer customers needs and we and we support the bulk of those HHS state agencies out there yeah so having said that that you know we have to not only move fast but but with the solutions servicenow has to offer I don't have the resources or even the expertise to be quite honest on on some of the stuff that we know we can do yep but we don't have the the Manpower or our expertise to do it so lean on people's or put folks like you guys with glide fast and it's been a good journey I'll admit to that it's you know like any any third party engagement you know it's kind of kind of clunky in the beginning but once you kind of get your feet wet and everyone kind of understands what's going on you start making some serious progress done that with you guys of course I mean it's been about a two-year Journey thus far yeah wow and it's been very very good for me personally because we are crossing the Finish Line getting some good stuff done but having to lean on your team for that expertise that we don't have you know and and I love that because I come from the school you know I'm a pretty smart guy I think but I I don't know everything and I don't claim to know everything so far so good but you know there's someone else out there that knows it let's tap into their their yeah right yeah and we do that with you guys and we do it quite well and and I do appreciate and thank you Mike for you and the team and the support because we've thrown you guys some some pretty good curveballs and you guys have always been there to to help us you know work through it we love the curveballs and I'll tell you Bob like that's that's what's great about Glide fast is like you know when from day one I always wanted to be surrounded with people smarter than me I mean you know I'm I'm maybe I'm the most passionate the loudest person you know waving the Glide fast flag there but I am like the least intelligent one here like you know and it's especially with servicenow I mean I'm there's nobody in the world I'm convinced because I I know a lot of experts that knows the entire platform it's impossible I agree there's no way you can have the front end experience and the expertise the back end the infrastructure you know the process specific areas industry now which is what makes it fun and is what makes uh an opportunity for for a great market and um a nice competitive market as well so all right Bob what's I always like to ask one thing you can leave uh our audience with some advice uh you're obviously extremely successful so we always like to pay it forward do you have any advice for people want to maybe move up in their career like you have and reinvent them themselves that's a tough one but uh yeah I think keep an open mind I mean that's you know it's it's it's like anything in life you know there's challenges and there's changes and we as humans sometimes have that difficult uh play of I don't want to change I'm I'm in my comfort zone whatever you want to call it and I would just say you know don't don't do that I mean it's it's actually kind of good to get out of your comfort zone you know push yourself a little bit reinvent yourself if you need to and the other side of it is and I know we're talking service now but let's not discount it's a pretty strong platform and there's a lot opportunity if you have that servicenow background whatever that may be right so I I would definitely tell people you know don't don't be shy don't be scared and and truthfully you might want to think about jumping on that servicenow bandwagon I mean if I could go back again and kind of redo some things heck I'd be I'd be a coder sitting in my in my house making good bank and just coding not worried about the political stress I deal with but but I would say just keep keep an open mind is what I would say to people is you know I've I've definitely adjusted and changed my career over over time and and truthfully the stuff I learned whether it was being a server admin or a network you know engineer back in the day that all kind of helps today even with working with servicenow so yeah keep an open mind would be my main thing and don't don't be scared to to Branch out and even if you you tip over it's not a mistake it's a learning opportunity and I always kind of play it that way of of learn learn as you go and and improve as you go love it Bob thanks so much for joining us on an episode of Glide chat make sure you subscribe to us on LinkedIn and on YouTube and uh everyone have a great day [Music] thank you [Music]